Front Ħar­sien ODZ yes­ter­day said it ex­pects the Plan­ning Tri­bunal to up­hold ear­lier de­ci­sions to refuse per­mits for three plan­ning ap­pli­ca­tions in and around Wied Għo­mor.

The first ap­peal, re­gard­ing the ex­ten­sion of a pri­vate villa and ad­di­tion of a swim­ming pool, to be heard to­mor­row, should be re­fused again, given that the ex­ist­ing struc­ture is il­le­gal.

Re­gard­ing the sec­ond case, the con­struc­tion of a twofloor ‘ex­ten­sion,’ swim­ming pool, cesspit and reser­voir ad­ja­cent to a farm­house, to be heard on 6 Oc­to­ber, the Front noted “a wor­ry­ing in­crease in the re­liance upon af­fi­davits to de­ter­mine past use of prop­erty. De­ter­min­ing whether a prop­erty was once used as a res­i­dence should de­pend upon clear and trans­par­ent pro­cesses, and not upon any in­di­vid­ual’s mem­ory and/or in­tegrity.”

Fi­nally, an­other ap­pli­ca­tion to be heard on 22 Novem­ber, re­gards the con­struc­tion of a 133-room re­tire­ment home and an­cil­lary fa­cil­i­ties in a dis­used quarry.

“The Front ob­jects to de­vel­oper Lau­rence Galea’s re­cent state­ment in the press that res­i­dents must choose be­tween his re­tire­ment home or fur­ther quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. Per­mits for such ac­tiv­i­ties must be granted through an ob­jec­tive and trans­par­ent process via the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties and de­vel­op­ers must not be al­lowed to think that Mal­tese cit­i­zens will be held to ran­som by their threats.

“All three ap­pli­ca­tions should be re­fused on the grounds that they are lo­cated Out­side De­vel­op­ment Zone, on agri­cul­tural land with sig­nif­i­cant nat­u­ral veg­e­ta­tion, and in a sys­tem of val­leys which are pro­tected as Ar­eas of Eco­log­i­cal Im­por­tance and Sites of Sci­en­tific Im­por­tance.”